Corruption on the Texas border
The guy did not manage the money he made from the bribes very well if he had that kind of credit card and car debt. He may have been stuffing his profits up his nose in the form of cocaine. The nose monster can make people do crazy things.A veteran customs inspector recently arrested in Texas on drug charges helped traffickers smuggle about 3,000 pounds of cocaine into the country over five years, according to a court document filed last week.
The inspector, Jorge A. Leija, 43, allowed smugglers to drive cars loaded with cocaine through his entry lane at the Eagle Pass border crossing, about 140 miles southwest of San Antonio, without inspection, according to testimony by an unnamed Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
Mr. Leija was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from January 2001 to October 2006, the agent said at a bail hearing on Thursday in Federal District Court in Del Rio, Tex.
Court documents said Mr. Leija was also paid $30,000 to make false statements on an application he submitted in September 2003 to obtain an American passport for another person.
Mr. Leija worked as an inspector for 11 years, said Rick Pauza, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman in Laredo, Tex.
...Mr. Leija’s arrest is the latest in scores of corruption cases the past few years involving agents along the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
The cases have come as the Border Patrol and other agencies that police the border have significantly increased their ranks. Internal affairs investigators are being added to address corruption, but the problem, officials have said, could get worse before it gets better.
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Mr. Leija, a naturalized American citizen born in the Mexican state of Coahuila, told investigators that he traveled to Mexico three or four times a week to visit his children. He earned an annual salary of nearly $62,000 at the time of his arrest, according to the detention order, but owed more than $50,000 in credit card debt and car payments.
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The case does point out how the corruption in Mexico caused by the drug trade is creeping across the border. I have mentioned the Starr County Sheriff who was arrested for taking bribes and facilitating the flow of drugs across the border near Rio Grande City which is not too far from where this guy worked.
These cases are another reason why it is in our interest to help Mexico fight the criminal drug insurgency that is underway.
"Rio Grande City which is not too far from where this guy worked." If by not to far you mean a few hundred miles... then yeah.. your right :-\ Do you have a problem with Rio Grande City?.......
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